Economic Growth Answers

ECONOMIC GROWTH PRACTICE QUESTIONS 1. Which of the following is true? a. Although levels of real GDP per person vary substantially from country to country, the growth rate of real GDP per person is similar across countries. b. Productivity is not closely linked to government policies. c. The level of real GDP per person is a good gauge of economic prosperity, and the growth rate of real GDP per person is a good gauge of economic progress. d. Productivity may be measured by the growth rate of real GDP per person. 2. Which of the following is correct? a. Productivity is hours worked divided by output produced. b. Americans have a higher standard of living than Indonesians because American workers are more productive than Indonesian workers. c. Changes in the market prices of most resources indicate that they are becoming increasingly scarce. d. All of the above are correct. 3. Which of the following is a determinant of productivity? a. human capital b. physical capital c. natural resources d. All of the above are correct. 4. Human capital is the a. knowledge and skills that workers acquire through education, training, and experience. b. stock of equipment and structures that is used to produce goods and services. c. total number of hours worked in an economy. d. same thing as technological knowledge. 5. Which of the following lists contains, in this order, natural resources, human capital, and physical capital? a. For a restaurant: the produce used to make salad, the things the Chef learned at Cooking School, the freezers where the steaks are kept. b. For a furniture company: wood, the company cafeteria, saws. c. For a railroad: fuel, railroad engines, railroad tracks. d. None of the above are correct. 6. The relationship between the quantity of output created and the quantity of inputs needed to create it is called a. the capital accumulation function. b. technological knowledge. c. the production function. d. human capital. 7. Accumulating capital a. requires that society sacrifice consumption goods in the present. b. allows society to consume more in the present. c. decreases saving rates. d. has no tradeoffs. 8. If there are diminishing returns to capital, a. capital produces fewer goods as it ages. b. new ideas are not as useful as old ideas. c. increases in the capital stock eventually decrease output. d. increases in the capital stock increase output by ever smaller amounts. 9. Suppose that Poland undertakes policy to increase its saving rate. This policy will likely a. have no impact on GDP growth. b. lead to somewhat higher GDP growth for a few years. c. lead to substantially higher GDP growth for a period of several decades. d. lead to a permanently higher growth rate. 10. Real GDP per person is $21,000 in Aquilonia, $15,000 in Nemedia and $6,000 in Shem. Saving per person is $2,000 in all three countries. Other things equal, we would expect that a. all three countries will grow at the same rate. b. Aquilonia will grow the fastest. c. Nemedia will grow the fastest. d. Shem will grow the fastest. 11. The logic behind the catch-up effect is that a. workers in countries with low incomes will work more hours than workers in countries with high incomes. b. the capital stock in rich countries deteriorates at a higher rate because it already has a lot of capital. c. new capital adds more to production in a country that doesn’t have much capital than in a country that already has much capital. d. None of the above are correct. 12. In the 1800s, Europeans purchased stock in American companies who used the funds to build railroads and factories. The Europeans made a. foreign portfolio investments. b. indirect domestic investments. c. foreign direct investments. d. foreign indirect investments. 13. Investment from abroad a. is a way for poor countries to learn the state-of-the-art technologies developed and used in richer countries. b. is viewed by economists as a way to increase growth. c. often requires removing restrictions that governments have imposed on foreign ownership of domestic capital. d. All of the above are correct. 14. All else equal, which of the following would tend to cause GDP per person to rise? a. high population growth b. investment in human capital c. rapid growth in the number of workers d. All of the above are correct. 15. Why is productivity related to the standard of living? In your answer be sure to explain what productivity and standard of living mean. Make a list of things that determine labor productivity. 16. A puzzle: The share of GDP devoted to investment was similar for the United States and South Korea over the last 40 years. However, South Korea had a 6 percent growth rate of average annual income, while the United States had only a 2 percent growth rate over that last 40 years. How can this be explained? 17. What is the difference between human capital and technology? 18. The catch-up effect says that countries with low income can grow faster than countries with higher income. However, in statistical studies that include many diverse countries we do not observe the catch-upeffect unless we control for other variables that affect productivity. Considering the determinants of productivity, list and explain some things that would tend to prohibit or limit a poor country’s ability to catch up with the rich ones. 19. In addition to investment in physical and human capital, what other public policies might a country adopt to increase productivity? 20. Why are property rights important for the growth of a nation's standard of living? 21. Explain what the productivity slowdown and speedup are. What do economists believe was the cause of the slowdown? 22. Some economists argue that it is possible to raise the standard of living by reducing population growth. As an economist interested in incentives rather than coercion, what kind of policy would you recommend to slow population growth? 23. Most countries import substantial amounts of goods and services from other countries. Yet the chapter says that a nation can enjoy a high standard of living only if it can produce a large quantity of goods and services. Can you reconcile these two facts. 24. Suppose that society decided to reduce consumption and increase investment. a. How would this change affect economic growth? b. What groups in society may be hurt, and who may benefit? 25. What is the opportunity cost of investing in physical capital? Do you think that a country can overinvest in capital? What is the opportunity cost of investing in human capital? Can a country overinvest in human capital? ANSWERS 1. c 2. b 3. d 4. a 5. a 6. c 7. a 8. d 9. c 10. d 11. c 12. a 13. d 14. b 15. The standard of living is a measure of how well people live. Income per person is an important dimension of the standard of living and is positively correlated with other things such as nutrition and life expectancy that make people better off. Productivity measures how much people can produce in an hour. As productivity increases, people can produce more (and use less to produce the same amount) and so their standard of living increases. The factors that determine labor productivity include the amounts of physical capital (equipment and structures), human capital (knowledge and skills), and natural resources available to workers, as well as the state of technological knowledge in society. 16. The solution to the puzzle is based on the concept of diminishing returns to capital. A country that has a lot of income, and so a lot of capital, gains less by adding more capital than does a country that currently has little capital. It is easy to envision how a capital poor country could increase their output considerably with even a little more capital. 17. Technology is society’s understanding of production techniques. Human capital is the labor force’s understanding of these ideas. A society may have lots of information about how to produce goods, but still have lots of people who know little of this information. For example, in the United States there exists information about how best to use a butter churn and how to make lye soap, but most people know nothing about it. 18. The argument that poor countries will tend to catch up with rich ones is based on the idea that another unit of capital will increase output more in a country that has little capital than one that has much capital. So, for a given share of GDP devoted to investment, a poor country will grow faster than a rich one. This argument assumes that other things are the same, but share of GDP invested may be lower in a poor country and the productivity of investment may be less. A politically unstable environment where property rights are unprotected or not secure tends to discourage investment. A country that has limited trade because of legal restrictions or geography cannot focus on producing what it produces best and so has lower productivity. To get the most out of investment, or even simply to use some types of new investment, requires having workers who have acquired some basic human capital. 19. In addition to investment in physical and human capital, a country might increase productivity by (a) specifying and enforcing property rights, (b) encouraging free trade, (c) controlling population growth, and (d) promoting research and development. 20. Property rights are an important prerequisite for the price system to work in a market economy. If an individual or company is not confident that claims over property or over the income from property can be protected, or that contracts can be enforced, there will be little incentive for individuals to save, invest, or start new businesses. Likewise, there will be little incentive for foreigners to invest in the real or financial assets of the country. The distortion of incentives will reduce efficiency in resource allocation and will reduce saving and investment which in turn will reduce the standard of living. 21. From 1959 to 1973 U.S. productivity grew at a rate of about 3.2 percent. From 1973 to 1995 it grew by about 1.5 percent. This lead to slower growth in real GDP per person, which would have been 50 percent higher if the slowdown had not occurred. Although the evidence is not decisive, it appears that the slowdown was due to a slowdown in technological progress. It is also possible that the 1959-1973 period was simply a time of extraordinary growth. However, productivity growth has been higher at 2.6 percent since 1995, which corresponds with the growth of information technology and the internet. 22. Since bearing a child has an opportunity cost, policies designed to increase the opportunity cost of bearing children would likely reduce population growth rates. In particular, women with the opportunity to receive a good education and desirable employment tend to want to have fewer children than do those with fewer opportunities outside the home. Hence, policies designed to increase educational and employment opportunities for women will likely reduce population growth rates without coercion. 23. The facts that countries import many goods and services yet must produce a large quantity of goods and services themselves to enjoy a high standard of living are reconciled by noting that there are substantial gains from trade. In order to be able to afford to purchase goods from other countries, an economy must generate income. By producing many goods and services, then trading them for goods and services produced in other countries, a nation maximizes its standard of living. 24. a) More investment would lead to faster economic growth in the short run. b) The change would benefit many people in society who would have higher incomes as the result of faster economic growth. However, there might be a transition period in which workers and owners in consumption-good industries would get lower incomes, and workers and owners in investmentgood industries would get higher incomes. In addition, someone would have to reduce their spending for some time so that investment could rise. 25. The opportunity cost of investing in capital is the loss of consumption that results from redirecting resources towards investment. Over-investment in capital is possible because of diminishing marginal returns. A country can "over-invest" in capital if people would prefer to have higher consumption spending and less future growth. The opportunity cost of investing in human capital is also the loss of consumption that is needed to provide the resources for investment. A country could "over-invest" in human capital if people were too highly educated for the jobs they could get for example, if the best job a Ph.D. in philosophy could find is managing a restaurant.